Solid-state battery tuyere who is bragging who is really awesome?

Sales of 0, market capitalization of more than 100 billion yuan, this is not a myth, but an American solid-state battery company Quantum Scape (referred to as QS) to create a miracle.

The company listed in a backdoor listing in November 2020 and landed on the New York Stock Exchange. at its peak, the market capitalization exceeded 300 billion yuan and was called a demon stock in the battery field by investors.

Why is QS so sought after by capital? Has the age of solid-state batteries come? What is the real progress of industrialization?

Behind the Capital Carnival

Lithium batteries are the key to the era of electric cars.

Since lithium battery was used in new energy vehicles in 2008, the energy density of power battery has increased from 100Wh/kg to 250Wh/kg. Under the current technology system, the energy density of power battery can not be improved all the time, and energy density and safety are the two ends of the game.

In the past two years, frequent electric vehicle fires are sounding the alarm, and the energy density of power batteries is approaching the limit. It is generally believed that the energy density of 300Wh/kg will be the ceiling of liquid electrolyte lithium battery.

The solid-state battery is the key to break the limit and let the battery energy density and safety climb to another high-rise building. Behind the high market capitalization of QS is the expectation of the market for the next generation of power battery technology.

The start-up, founded in 2010 and supported by high-quality capital such as Volkswagen, SAIC, Continental and Bill Gates, is considered the closest solid-state battery innovator to mass production.

The core technical difficulty of solid-state battery lies in electrolyte.

Electrolyte is an important medium of lithium ion transport, which is very important to the performance of battery. At present, the mainstream solid-state batteries in the market can be divided into three types according to different electrolytes: polymers, sulfides and oxides. Solid electrolyte materials based on different technology systems have their own advantages and challenges.

Among them, the poor flexibility of oxide materials and poor interface contact will lead to the increase of interface impedance, while polymers have the problem of low electrical conductivity, which is 4-5 orders of magnitude lower than that of liquid electrolytes. Sulphide solid-state batteries are faced with problems such as electrolyte sensitivity to air, harsh manufacturing conditions, expensive raw materials, immature large-scale production technology and so on.

QS claims that it has solved the electrolyte problem. Around 2015, QS discovered a material that could avoid all these drawbacks and spent five years studying how to produce it effectively. According to QS, the material has been produced, fundamentally solving the basic scientific problem that hinders the commercialization of solid-state batteries.

Currently, QS declined to elaborate on its solid electrolyte materials for fear of being stolen by competitors.

In spite of this, J.B. Straubel, a battery expert and former co-founder of Tesla, spoke highly of QS: "Quantum Scape has the opportunity to redefine the battery industry."

However, QS is not alone in redefining the battery industry. In this competition, traditional battery giants, car companies and start-up battery companies have all tried their best.

According to the general analysis of the industry, 2025 will be the key time for solid-state batteries to really hit the ground. From the perspective of public disclosure, there are three companies that are the strongest. In addition to QS, the other two are Huineng Technology and Toyota.

Scramble for beach 2025

Competing for the earliest landing time, QS set a mass production date for 2024 and said it would form a joint venture with Volkswagen Group to produce solid-state batteries and supply batteries for its electric vehicles.

In January, QS revealed on social media that its solid-state battery had an energy density of more than 1000 Whhand L, completed nearly 1100 cycle tests, and still maintained more than 80% of its capacity.

"We are the first people to solve the solid-state problem, and no other solid-state system can get close to this," Jagdeep Singh, founder of QS, said confidently in an interview.

Huineng Technology is facing up to this confidence. This is an innovative company from Taiwan, which says its technology is seven years ahead of QS.

Different from QS's conservative electrolyte technology, Huineng Technology revealed that its chosen technical route is the oxide system, while the positive and negative electrodes, like QS, use ternary materials and metal lithium respectively.

Huineng says its prototype battery has been built, with a mass energy density of 383 Whhand kg and a volume energy density of 1025 Whhand L, and can be tested 500 times.

With regard to the mass production plan, Huineng Technology is also similar to QS, and is scheduled for trial production in 2023 and mass production in 2024. There are 4 enterprises that cooperate with Huineng Technology openly, FAW, Skyline, Ulai and Aichi.

From the information announced by the two enterprises, the product performance and mass production time are very close. Is Huineng Technology challenging QS a gimmick or strength? It remains to be seen. At present, it is clear that the leading part of Huineng science and technology is the construction process of its production line.

Huineng Technology has decided to build a plant in Qingshan Lake Science and Technology City in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. the project plans to have a total investment of 38 billion yuan and a cumulative production capacity of 7GWh. it is expected to complete the construction of the 1GWh production line by June this year.

According to Huineng Technology, its own technical preparation and verification has not been a big problem, and the follow-up is mainly to solve the problems of production line construction and mature supply chain system.

The mass production of solid-state battery needs to go through the steps of laboratory-small-scale test-pilot-mass production and so on. Huineng Technology believes that most of the other enterprises are in the small-scale and pilot-scale stage, while they themselves have reached the stage of mass production on a large scale.

At the same time, the arrogant company judged that Toyota's layout in solid-state batteries is much faster than other companies such as QS, but it is also four years behind.

Toyota is recognized as one of the most powerful players in the field of solid-state batteries in the industry. Looking back on its layout, Toyota first put forward the relevant developments in 2008, partnering with Ilika, a solid-state battery start-up.

In 2014, Toyota announced that it was working on solid-state battery development and had the largest number of technology patents. In 2017, Toyota announced that it would join hands with Panasonic, saying that the two sides would have a long-term and in-depth cooperation in solid-state battery research and development.

Toyota and Panasonic have also formed a joint venture, Prime Planet Energy&Solutions Inc., with a stake of 51:49, surrounding the cooperation in the power battery sector. The joint venture began operating in April 2020 and now employs about 5100 people.

Toyota adopted the sulphide technology route and had planned to showcase solid-state battery research and development at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Affected by the epidemic, the plan had to be postponed until 2021.

Although no specific data were disclosed, Toyota said it had successfully produced samples of solid-state batteries as planned and installed them on concept cars, hoping to become the first manufacturer in the world to mass-produce cars with solid-state batteries. It plans to launch a prototype car in 2021 and start mass production around 2025.

Improved technology competition

From the perspective of the three leading companies, the mass production time of solid-state batteries is generally set at around 2025. And where does the claim that mass production will take place in 2021 and 2022 come from?

In January 2021, Xilai announced on NIO Day that it would release a solid-state battery package with a single energy density of 360Wh/kg in 2022.

One stone stirred up thousands of waves, blowing up several domestic start-ups focusing on solid-state batteries, including Huineng Technology, Qingtao Energy, Weilan New Energy and so on. According to the data, these enterprises all have plans to mass-produce solid-state batteries in the near future.

In fact, none of the companies that claim to be on the edge of mass production have reached the level of all-solid-state batteries, a battery expert told the Story of the Automobile Market. At present, most of the enterprises that claim to be in mass production are the improvement of traditional technological routes, or solid-liquid mixed products.

Huineng, for example, claims all-solid lithium metal batteries, but the electrolyte is still not 100% solid, but 90% quasi-solid.

In terms of the development of the other two start-ups, both Qingtao Energy and Weilan New Energy were established in 2016. The former was formed by a team of Tsinghua University, while the latter relies on the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and both use oxide solid electrolytes in their technical routes.

Qingtao Energy has successively received investment from BAIC, SAIC, Guangzhou Automobile and other car companies, and has reached cooperation with Hezhong New Energy to jointly promote the research and application of solid-state batteries. The two sides have conducted joint research and development and testing of the new model for nearly two years.

In 2018, Qingtao Energy built the first solid-state battery production line in China, which is mainly used in special power supply, high-end digital and other fields. In July 2019, Qingtao Energy's annual 10GWh solid-state lithium battery project was signed in Yichun City, Jiangxi Province.

Weilan New Energy has two major production bases in Fangshan, Beijing and Liyang, Jiangsu Province. The Liyang plant plans to produce UAV batteries with a design capacity of 200m watt-hours and to produce 270Wh/kg hybrid solid-liquid batteries capable of 5C continuous Discharge.

In the field of power batteries, Weilan New Energy has completed the design and development of hybrid solid-state batteries with high nickel positive electrodes above 300Wh/kg, with a cycle life of more than 1200 times. Based on the 18-24-month lead-in period of the entire car plant, the company said that solid-state battery products are expected to be mass produced in 2022.

Unlike startups who put all their eggs in one basket, traditional battery giants are ready to stay ahead of the competition. While laying out solid-state batteries, we continue to explore the improvement space of liquid batteries.

Traditional battery companies are constantly improving their battery packaging processes, such as BYD's blade battery, Honeycomb Energy laminated battery, Ningde era's CTC technology, and Tesla's 4680 electrodeless ear battery.

At the same time, the positive and negative materials are also improved, such as silicon-doped lithium, ultra-high nickel batteries and so on. The so-called silicon-doped lithium is to increase the content of silicon in the negative electrode and increase the content of lithium at the same time, in order to make up for the increase of lithium loss caused by the increase of silicon content in the battery charge and discharge process, and then improve the battery performance.

The ultra-high nickel battery is to further increase the content of nickel in the cathode material. The current high nickel battery refers to the NCM 811 system, and there may be a new generation battery with a Ni-Co / mn ratio of 9 / 0.5 / 0.5 / 0.5.

On the whole, before the real arrival of all-solid-state batteries, there will be a revolution in the power battery market around improved technology.

Write at the end:

In the era of liquid lithium batteries, market share is mainly concentrated in several battery giants in places such as China, Japan and South Korea, which have established strong technical and resource barriers, and there are few opportunities for newcomers to join.

The arrival of the solid-state battery era has opened a new channel, and start-ups at home and abroad have sprung up frequently. At the same time, it also brings opportunities for car companies to regain the initiative of battery technology.

On the one hand, Toyota, Tesla and other companies are actively layout battery technology, on the other hand, Quantum Scape, Solid Power, Huineng Technology, Qingtao Energy, Weilan New Energy and other start-ups focused on solid-state batteries began to come to the fore.

Start-ups start up quickly, focusing on a single point of breakthrough in solid-state battery technology, but there are often car companies behind these companies. For example, Volkswagen and QS, Toyota and Panasonic, BMW and Solid Power and so on.

In contrast, in the development of released solid-state battery technology, Panasonic, Ningde era, BYD, Samsung, LG, SKI and other leading companies have a weaker voice, but the layout of these enterprises in the solid-state battery field can not be ignored.

There may be two considerations for the giants not to release information prematurely: on the one hand, these companies are targeting all-solid-state batteries, and the technology is not mature enough; on the other hand, as the defenders of the battery field, there is no need for these companies to open their cards so quickly.

In any case, every step from "liquid" to "solid" is very difficult.

In addition to solving the difficult problems of basic science, solid-state battery mass production is also faced with the problems of production process, product consistency guarantee, large-scale cost control and mature supply chain.

The arrival of all-solid-state batteries will take 5-10 years, and before that, power batteries will go through a transitional stage of technological improvement.